You Changed My Life:

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You Changed My Life

• The Influence of Bob Dylans Music on Fans
  Identity Development
• Stephen Dine Young, Ph.D.
• Department of Psychology
• Hanover College
• Hanover, Indiana
• [phone]
• youngst_at_hanover.edu

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Summary This presentation explores the personal
significance that Bob Dylans music has had for
some of his listeners. This approach applies
particularly well to Dylan since, in his poem
Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie, he essentially
makes the claim that he himself finds hope in
Guthries music. Following Kenneth Burkes
assertion that literature should be understood as
equipment for living, I argue that all
art/popular culture, including Dylans music, can
be studied in light of how audiences
self-consciously apply symbolic media to their
everyday lives. This approach is grounded in a
view that the human mind is essentially symbolic
and that symbols are the path toward deepening
our understanding of our selves, our world and
our relationships with other people. Symbols are
organized in narrative form in order to bring
coherence to our experience. The development
psychologist Dan McAdams argues that our
identities (i.e., our understanding of who we
are) can be understood as our life stories. One
of the areas in which we form our life stories is
in our encounters with art, literature and music.
In contrast to the historical and textual
approaches that are typical of the Dylan
Symposium, this presentation focuses on the
experience of Dylans audience. A couple of years
ago I placed a link on www.expectingrain.com to a
questionnaire on Dylans impact. The core
question was--Please describe what Bob Dylans
music has meant to you. In other words, in what
ways has Dylans music been personally important
to you? Over 500 people responded from all over
the world, and an additional survey was conducted
for German-Speaking participants by my colleague
Susanne Kristen. The analysis of this enormously
rich material is in the early phases, but the
current presentation focuses on what McAdams
calls imagoes--the characters that dominate the
stories that different individuals tell about
their lives. These characters are manifested in
the responses to the questionnaire. In
particular, the characters of The Sage, The
Warrior, and the Lover are identified using
representative quotes by participants. The
implications of these responses for identity
development are discussed. In conclusion, I
reiterate that the symbols we encounter in
popular art can become part of our identity by
becoming part of stories we tell about who we are
and what we want to become. I also assert that
certain artists like Bob Dylan can have a
particularly powerful impact on peoples lives.
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Woody Guthries Influence on Dylan

• And where do you look for this hope that yer
  seekin?
• . . . .You can either go to the church of your
  choice
• Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital
• You'll find God in the church of your choice
• You'll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State
  Hospital
• And though it's only my opinion
• I may be right or wrong
• You'll find them both
• In the Grand Canyon
• At sundown
• (Bob Dylan, Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie,
  1963)

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Equipment for Living

• Inspired by Kenneth Burke (1937/1967)
• Proverbs as Equipment for Living
• The higher the ape goes, the more he shows his
  tail (p. 294)
• Literature as Equipment for Living
• Literature Proverbs writ large (p.296)
• Burkes method would derive its relevance from
  the fact that it should apply both to works of
  art and to social situations outside of art . . .
  Art forms like tragedy or comedy or satire
  would be treated as equipments for living, that
  size up situations in various ways and in keeping
  with correspondingly various attitudes (pp.
  303-304)

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Equipment for Living (cont.)

• Art/Music/Movies/Popular Culture as Equipment for
  Living (Dine Young, 2000)
• The self-conscious application of symbolic media
  to the activities of everyday life
• Dylan as Equipment for Living (Dine Young, 2005)

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The Power of Symbols

• Symbols as paths to our potential
• Symbolic interpretation enriches the poverty
  of consciousness so that it learns to understand
  again the forgotten language of the instincts
  (Jung, 1964)
• Symbolic richness in Dylan
• Folk tradition (Marcus, 1997 Gray, 2003)
• Poetic tradition (Ricks, 2004)

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Stories and Identity

• The uses of symbols
• Make meaning
• Tell stories
• Identity as a life story (McAdams, 1993)
• A life story is a personal myth that an
  individual begins working on in late adolescence
  and young adulthood in order to provide his or
  her life with unity or purpose and in order to
  articulate a meaningful niche in the psychosocial
  world. (p. 5)

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Identity Development Through Popular Culture

• We learn
• Symbols from symbols
• Stories from stories
• Identity development through symbols and stories
  we encounter
• i.e., Art as equipment for living
• i.e., Dylan as equipment for living

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Different Approaches

• Historical Approaches
• Textual Approaches
• Social Scientific Approaches
• The effects of Rainy Day Women, 12 35 on
  the consumption of marijuana among adolescents
• Reception Approaches
• --Romance novel readers (Radway, 1991)
• --Springsteen fans (Cavicchi, 2002)

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The Dylan Survey

• Link placed on www.expectingrain.com in 2004
  (many thanks to Karl-Erik Andersen)
• Core Research Question Please describe what Bob
  Dylans music has meant to you. In other words,
  in what ways has Dylans music been personally
  important to you?
• 509 responses (many several pages)
• 42 additional responses to German language
  version created by Susanne Kristen

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Developmental Characters

• Characters archetypes (Jung)
• Characters help us make sense of experience
• Characters imagoes (McAdams)
• Certain characters are special to certain
  individuals

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Characters in Respondents Stories

• Special characters are manifested in
  questionnaire responses
• The Sage
• The Warrior
• The Lover

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The Sage

• Dylan opened my mind after the Beatles freed it.
  24 y.o., male, Canada
• I think what I responded to initially was that
  in the young Dylan . . . was that here was a guy
  with the energy and anger of Johnny Rotten and
  his words were really cool . . . However that
  was the hook only. Dylan is one of those artists
  whose immense body of work pays greater dividends
  the more you explore it. Tom Waits once said that
  Dylan's body of work is a 'planet to be
  explored.'...every album was a revelation of new
  ideas and attitudes with a reassuring
  consistency underneath it all...you knew the same
  guy was creating this material. 30 y.o, male,
  USA

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The Sage and the Humanist

• Bob's music kept me grounded and sane and got me
  through the deepest grief I could have ever
  imagined. He gave me a 'window' to look out of.
  To this day Love Minus Zero No Limits is my most
  favorite song in the universe. I wanted so much
  to become the woman he paints in that fabulous
  song. It was a map of the soul of a gracious
  profound and inspiring woman who transmitted
  knowledge and goodness. I have always aspired to
  manifest those qualities. 56 y.o., female, USA

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The Warrior

• Dylan and his music means A LOT to me and has
  done so since I was 15. It all started as part of
  a liberating process from a very authoritarian
  father and a gloomy past. 42 y.o., male Norway
• I was about 13 years old . . . growing up as a
  white South African in the turbulent last decade
  of apartheid. The voice and words of The Times
  They Are aChangin cut like a double-sided
  sword. It accused and inspired at the same time.
  I can remember feeling as if we were doing
  something unlawful. (A lot of music was banned at
  that time although not this) I know that most of
  my teachers and family (though not parents) would
  have been appalled at the implication of the
  meaning of the song. It expressed all the unease
  my generation felt about apartheid. 36 y.o.,
  male, South Africa

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The Lover

• Dylan's music has for better or for worse
  heavily influenced at least two of my recent
  relationships. If I can identify with A Simple
  Twist of Fate's protagonist for instance surely
  I take at least some of that into a relationship
  of my own . . . . My girlfriend bought us tickets
  to a concert but before we got to go she broke
  up with me. We agreed to go nonetheless but it
  was a terrible experience. I guess that's the way
  it goes something that you've looked forward to
  ever since you first heard Girl from the North
  Country could turn into a nightmare. But it was
  exhilarating and self-affirming at the same time.
  Perhaps as with Dylan's work things aren't
  always black and white. 22 YO Male, UK

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Conclusion Dylan as Equipment for Living

• The symbols we encounter in popular art can
  become part of our identity they become part of
  stories we tell about who we are and what we want
  to become
• Some artistslike Dylanare exceptional

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References

• Burke, K. (1967). The philosophy of literary
  form Studies in symbolic action (2nd Ed.).
  Baton Rouge, LA Louisiana State University
  Press.
• Cavicchi, D. (2002). Tramps like us Music and
  meaning among Springsteen fans. Oxford Oxford
  University Press.
• Dine Young, S. (2000). Movies as equipment for
  living A developmental analysis of the
  importance of film in everyday life. Critical
  Studies in Media Communication, 17(4), 447-468.
• Dine Young, S. (2005). Bob Dylan, popular music
  and life stories. Impuls, 59(2), 87-90.
• Gray, M. (2003). Song and Dance Man 3 The Art
  of Bob Dylan. Continuum International
• Jung, C. (1964). Man and his symbols. New
  York Dell Publishing.
• Marcus, G. (1997). Invisible republic Bob
  Dylans Basement Tapes. New York Holt Co.
• McAdams, D.P. (1993). The stories we live by
  Personal myths and the making of the self. New
  York Guilford Press.
• Radway, J. (1991). Reading the romance Women,
  patriarchy and popular literature (2nd edition).
  Chapel Hill, NC North Carolina Press
• Ricks, C. (2004). Dylans visions of sin. New
  York Ecco Press.

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Demographics (Appendix 1)

• 509 Total Respondents Nationality
• Women 12 U.S. 53
• Men 88 U.K 18
• Canada 6
• Age of Respondents Other 23
• Teens 3
• 20s 19
• 30s 19
• 40s 30
• 50s 25
• 60s 2

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Age Time of Influence (Appendix 2)

• Age Most Influential Decade Most Influential
• Teens 27 1960s 18
• 20s 42 1970s 24
• 30s 16 1980s 10
• 40s 7 1990s 23
• 50s 3 2000s 20
• 60s 1 N/A 4
• N/A 4

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Favorite Other Musicians (Appendix 3)

• Musical Act Respondents Mentioning
• Beatles 29
• Neil Young 21
• Rolling Stones 15
• Van Morrison 11
• Bruce Springsteen 11
• Leonard Cohen 11
• Johnny Cash 11
• Tom Waits 9
• The Grateful Dead 9
• The Band 9

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Favorite Songs (Appendix 4)

• Song Respondent Mentioning
• Like a Rolling Stone 21
• Visions of Johanna 20
• Desolation Row 18
• Tangled Up In Blue 18
• Idiot Wind 15
• Its Alright Ma (Im Only Bleeding) 14
• Every Grain of Sand 14
• Not Dark Yet 13
• Mr. Tambourine Man 11
• Blind Willie McTell 9

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Favorite Albums (Appendix 5)

• Album Respondents Mentioning
• Blood on the Tracks 65
• Blonde on Blonde 49
• Highway 61 Revisited 42
• Time Out of Mind 41
• Love theft 28
• Bringing It All Back Home 25
• Desire 20
• Oh Mercy 18
• Freewheelin 17
• John Wesley Harding 14